I find it cute that he thinks teaching is mostly not a bullshit job. apart from the first 4 years it is as bullshit as any of his other examples. He just fails to recognize that due to personal bias.
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
201–210 of 357 posts
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try running a company or doing a start up with out a supply of capital.
Is it really so difficult to allocate capital that just about every city needs skyscrapers full of finance people? I'm asking that as a completely legitimate question - I really have no idea of how much work is required to give my small business a line of credit.
How would you build a skyscraper? That requires quite an investment of capital.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#203I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…
I thought that the redundancy in all the engineers working on competing identical products was bad but this is worse. No wonder we're not exploring space. My understanding of free market theory is that the "competition" supposedly drives down price, but I don't think free markets exist.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
That happens less in academics - I was thinking more of administrative areas in corporations. For example, there are no shortages of stories of administrators in procurement adding in additional required paperwork when more efficient computerized systems make their stamp on documents less required. Actually, this has happened in academics in a way too - consider the requirement of ever lengthening literature reviews…
I worked at a government agency that circa 2005 was using paper timesheets. The timesheets were required to be printed on a specific shade of blue paper. Hilarity ensued when some admin ordered "air force blue" paper instead of "power blue". The HR director decreed that only "power blue" would be accepted, and all other hues would be rejected. They probably spent 200 hours debating it.
Ok, I got to ask what exactly was HR's explanation for a particular shade of blue?
I've been part of something like this is a weird way. In the summer the humidity got too much for our HP4 printer and it would crinkle 20lb paper and get jammed. We found the 28 or 32 lb paper (long time ago / cannot remember exactly) would not jam and the printer worked fine.
So, in the summer, we changed to ordering the thicker paper. The gold paper was cheaper than the white paper at that weight. So, we order gold paper every summer.
Long after the building had air conditioning and the old printer was replaced, they still ordered gold paper every summer until the program closed.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree with Zeteo's assessment - only thing I would add is that people shouldn't assume someone else'e job is 'bullshit' simply because they can't directly see or appreciate the value it creates. For example: in the case of corporate leadership, it is easy and appealing to suggest they aren't creating any direct value... i.e. fire the leadership and 'widgets' will still get made. The problem with this thinking…
> if you really want to 'reap the benefits' or our more productive society, you can work 15 hours starting today. The tradeoff is that you'll need to move to the middle of Colorado, buy a small plot of land, build your own house and purchase a straight edge razor. What if you owned the home you live in, though? Lately, I've become a bit obsessed with this idea. The reason the 'wage slave' concept exists is that most…
How's the health quality of those less developed countries? What's the life expectancy? How many years until the kids have to starting working?
Where I live, a Southern European country, we don't really have big cars and nice vacations, but we do have cheap health care and high life expectancy (80 years).
And there aren't many less developed countries on the top of this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
Is it worth the 9-to-5 (or higher)? I don't know.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#206I think there is an inherent assumption at the heart of this logic that, when questioned and revealed as false, causes the entire argument to fall apart. The assumption is that because somebody believes that their job is "bullshit" or pointless, that their own assessment is actually correct.
Usually when people I know moan about how useless they are and how boring and pointless their jobs are, they are reflecting on inter-office politics, easier methods that could and should be employed, and a host of solutions that could render them useless. The only problem is that for whatever reason, those solutions have not been pursued and somebody is willing to pay them for their services.
It doesn't really matter whether you as the employee see the point in your job if the person paying you sees the need. It's important to remember that when you assume that your job could even be eliminated, you are making an assumption without necessary data. After all, you were hired because a need existed. In other words, I think people in many jobs underestimate their actual economic value to society. Like it or not, most artists don't actually contribute a whole lot of economic value. That is, they don't create wealth for other people. Those who do are usually compensated accordingly.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#207Where do I start with this half-baked article?
1) I've been through layoffs that disproportionately hit "paper-pushers"
2) Many of the "paper-pusher" jobs are extremely useful to society (e.g., actuaries), while the "manual" jobs may not be (e.g., why do we really need dock workers? Can't technology eventually replace them all in the future?)
Now economic usefulness is definitely not linked with personal satisfaction / some altruistic notion of "societal value".
At the end of the day, economic usefulness seems to always win out, because it takes money to do most anything, and generally money goes to the places with the highest potential economic ROI.
Insurance companies hire actuaries to help them manage their risk, while record labels aren't signing a bunch of unknown bands to ensure we have enough jazz musicians around.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#208Some of what people want is positive-sum: Books, aquariums, theater showings, even cars. As we get more productive, the amount of time you need to work for these decreases. A lot of what people want is zero-sum: Location, status symbols, and so forth. If you want to live in the centre of town you need to work more than anyone else who so wants, not just as much as it takes to cover the maintenance. This is, I believe…
There are negative sum jobs as well. Pharma people, promoting harmful drugs, soldiers or criminals.
Not all criminals are negative sum. For example, digital piracy is positive sum.
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are largely correct: it's an emergent pathology. Complex systems are full of those. But that doesn't answer the question as to why we never read articles like this. Why doesn't anyone ask this question? So I also blame the Puritan work ethic. "Idle hands are the devils tools," we're told, and work is (like Soviet Russia) both a duty and a right. Nothing offends our ultimately Puritan-rooted morality more…
Before we go too far, raising children is definitely not Biblically categorized as idle hands, but in fact praised and respected. The old-school Puritan would prefer you spend time teaching and raising children than helping an ad company sell more clicks. Or generally make a Skinner box. Don't know much about Soviet Russia but 19-teens Russian avant-garde art was pretty boss. To say nothing of Kandinsky. My perspecti…
My perspective is that idle hands are actually idle: not building, not thinking, not active, not contemplative, not searching, not trying, not even resting. But idle. Un(der) used. And rather hard to defend.
This is difficult for me to understand. How can you tell the difference between resting hands (easy to defend, imo), and idle hands?
Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
For most of history there were not big companies allocating capital, and for most of history it was nearly impossible for most people to obtain capital to start or grow their own business. Put another way--the modern financial system was created for a reason. The author supposes that it was a big conspiracy theory to give us all shitty jobs, but in counter I would point out that it has likely never been easier for pe…
Well, that's not necessarily true (at least, in my case). I can't walk down to the local bank and be approved for a small amount of capital without providing equal collateral. Even with a strong business plan. I have to show quite a bit of history of revenue and cash flow for a minimal credit line. On the other hand, it's relatively easy for me to ask a bunch of my friends to each lend me $10,000. And, that is more b…
One reason the modern financial system is so huge and complex is that so many of its features have been extended to individuals.
I, a rather average middle-aged dude, maintain 4 bank accounts, 6 lines of credit, 4 investment accounts, and 4 lines of insurance [1]. Think of the complexity involved in providing those services to me--now multiply by tens of millions of other people. This does not even get into the financial instruments of businesses and governments, which are far more complex.
The end result of all this complexity is that individuals like your friends can accumulate and access large sums of money to lend to you to start a business. Most new business financing does not come from banks, it comes from individuals, families, or alternate financial businesses like angel funds, venture capital, hedge funds, etc.
[1]
Bank accounts - 2 personal checking - 2 savings
Credit - 1 mortgage - 3 credit cards - 2 check cards
Investments - IRA - 401k - HSA - Brokerage (trading)
Insurance - Home - Auto - Life - Health